The Mystery of China's "Ghost Cities" -- Solved at Last? (And coming to a place near you, too?)

As controversy continues to bubble over the latest big local farmland buy-up and what it means for food production, it’s worth looking to see where
these foreign raiders are coming from, who’s backing them and how other countries are tightening their regulations to stop them.

I actually asked a Chinese national in my town about the ghost cities in Africa and he launched into an explanation touching on business practice,real
estate,taxation,etc.He tried to explain that it makes some sort of economic/business sense,but I'm not a person with any real knowledge of how these
matters work,so it went over my head-main thing is,they seem to use it as a type of investment to do with tax shelters/the real estate situation in
China,nothing underhanded or sinister.

From everything i've seen and read, these massive building projects were nothing more than the chinese equivalent of what the fed here does to prop
up the economy...economic manipulation...producing GDP simply to be able to say they have...

The sheer number of lies was breathtaking. This guy clearly has no shame and no conscience.

when are you going to submit a post that contains something other than opinion to back up your claims?

all you ever do is come in, and toss out snarky one-liners, or sometimes a few lines, and it's always opinion, and any time i've EVER seen you
provide some kind of link, it's always bogus information....

Originally posted by freedomSlave
for starters agenda 21 really ? did you even read the pdf?

who knows why they built these cities , maybe they don't like the asbestos and wanted to use a cleaner technology.

people who live in urban area generally don't have the poverty rate that rural areas do .

also just because a princton professor make a s claim still really doesn't make it true .

maybe if shtf the government was planning ahead instead of rebuilding a city they can just relocate to a new one . or they are planning for the future
while trade is good and money is coming in that people will be coming out of the woods to seek jobs for money to support their families .

who knows with how tight china is on anything that goes on there I doubt we will not know for a long time it is still all just speculation

The buildings were built so they can pump up their fake economy. Building these cities creates jobs, which in turn help the economy.
Encouraging urbanization to boost domestic spending is one of Beijing’s top policy priorities, but the government’s efforts to do so are already
hitting roadblocks.

Chinese officials are calling for a kind of populist urbanization. The Chinese word for it translates more directly as “small city-ization,”
rather than “urbanization.” The phrase is meant to signify a focus on developing emerging cities, rather than expanding large existing cities. (By
2025, China is expected to have over 200 cities with populations of more than 1 million.) Why? According to premier Li Keqiang, city dwellers spend
more than rural residents on services like schools, healthcare, leisure and financial advice—all things that would boost the country’s services
sector and decrease its export dependence.

The most logical explanation for these cities in the deserts or other far off places is to distribute population in case of war.

Chinese cities on the east coast are very densely populated and are very vulnerable.

It is same as a New Yorker maintaining a house in upstate New York as an second home. The city dwellers have bought property in these "new" cities.
They can move to these cities quickly in times of danger.

The stories of people being relocated en masse from countryside to fill these empty cities make no sense.

This is a powerful move by China in the Nancy Pelosi style of welfare creates jobs.
They can flood the country with cash and crank the hell out of the money pump.
This planet is becoming more and more competitive.
The next world war is going to be spectacular no doubt.

I thought these cities were built in order to try and boost the economy, however because of the economical difficulties they have faced they have
remained unsold.
Or the economy was doing well and so people invested in the housing industry, only for an economic downturn to happen resulting in these places
remaining unsold.

I agree that it would not make sense to force loads of people into these old decaying cities only for them to be reliant on welfare, it may give tptb
more power over those people, however would the bill at the end of the day be worth it?

I don't know, all I'm saying is look for the money, I don't think any capital gain they could make would offset the expense of keeping thousands or
millions of people fed and clothed.
And if they were going to kill all these people they would be better off causing some sort of large scale industrial accident in the middle of
nowhere, than moving a large body of visible people to a city, drawing attention to them, and then killing them.

Things just don't seem to make too much sense to me about the whole idea, I may be wrong though and there may be something completely nefarious going
on.
I'm going to do more digging on this and see what I can find, it's an interesting topic, I always thought these places were a bit weird, but huge
empty cities would.

In late 2011 many were expecting China's property bubble to burst. It looked as though housing prices had peaked and signs of stress were
beginning to appear (see discussion). But the correction turned out to be quite shallow and in spite of China's government's multiple attempts to
arrest housing price appreciation (and partially succeeding - see post), house prices went on rising. With real rates on deposits remaining in
negative territory for years, there were few places to turn for wealthy savers. Property became one of the primary vehicles to put away excess cash to
escape inflationary pressures. Moreover, municipal governments made large sums of money selling land to developers, while banks ("encouraged" by
municipalities) have been happily lending. And in many cases lenders and developers have set up arrangements that are a bit closer than "arms
length" (see discussion). Except for ordinary families who got shut out of the housing markets, everyone benefited from this rally. Read more:
soberlook.com...

These cities are China's answer to market manipulation, only on a domestic stage.

As the largest single employer in China, The Chinese government must continually come up with public works projects to keep $$ infused into the
economy.

The overall problem with this approach is similar to what we saw with our own "free" markets, once you start down the path of manipulating the
economy, regardless of the poitical basis for that economy, every infusion of capital is larger than the the last time, in order to hide the failings
of the previous infusion.

It's a totally unsustainable approach, and China will pay the price economically speaking just like we did.

Some economists claim that we haven't hit bottom yet ourselves due to the many mini-markets that exist within our free market approach to economics.

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